WHEN YOUR BOUNDARY GOES FOR A SWIM

Imagine waking up one morning to discover you've gained a few metres of beach... or lost half your garden to the sea. It sounds like bad luck, but English property law has had an answer for this since Roman times. In this episode we're looking at three wonderfully obscure words, accretion, diluvion and avulsion.

On the next stop of their coastal road trip, Richard and Lizzie explore one of the oldest and most unusual areas of property law: the legal consequences of a changing coastline.

The principles of accretion, diluvion and avulsion date back to Roman law, yet they continue to determine ownership of coastal land and riverbeds today. Despite their importance, remarkably little modern case law exists, leaving lawyers to rely on legal principles that are centuries old.